


Spiral

by the_moonmoth



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Accidental Love Confessions, Affection, Alien Biology, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Fingering, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Astronomy, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale Has a Vulva (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Discorporation (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Epiphanies, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Pronouns for Beelzebub, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, Friendship, Genderfluid Character, Getting Together, He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Held Down, Historical, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Metaphysics, Mild Kink, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Nonbinary Character, Oral Sex, Philosophy, Physics Metaphors, Pining, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Nudity, Porn with Feelings, Post-Coital Cuddling, Public Sex, References to Shakespeare, Romance, Scene: Crucifixion of Jesus 33 AD (Good Omens), Scene: St James's Park 1862 (Good Omens), Sharing a Bed, She/Her Pronouns for Crowley (Good Omens), Sleepy Sex, Smut, St James's Park (Good Omens), Stars, The Arrangement (Good Omens), Transphobia, Weddings, Wings, unconscious miracles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2020-10-19 11:07:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: Aziraphale pours for them in Mesopotamia, in Greece, in France. Crowley raises his glass in inns, in restaurants, in the Soho bookshop."What shall we toast?" he asks, and it echoes down the ages, a smooth, sliding spiral that comes around and around, but never quite in the same place.Aziraphale smiles fondly. "To us."Crowley only hesitates a moment, because it's been hard to wait, but Aziraphale all but promised him this moment was coming the night he handed over the holy water. There are spirals here, too.Collection of unrelated short fic. If you have found your way here via a particular tag, please see the index in Ch1.





	1. Index

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of ficlets ranging in length from 300 - 2,400 words, inspired by the list of prompts below from [this meme.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187692027308/send-me-characters-and-a-letter-and-ill-write) I decided to use them as writing practice and the initial aim was to keep them in the 100-500 word range. That proved harder than I thought! Still, most of these were written in under an hour and so are a little more rough and ready than my usual. I'm including an index so that if you, weary traveller, have found your way to my doorstep via a particular tag, you do not need to wade through every chapter looking for the fic to slake your thirst. These are all unbeta'd, but concrit is welcome.

**A. Fire/flames **

Chapter 2, Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 800 words.

Pining, mutual pining, historical, the arrangement, unconscious miracles

_ Was self-pity a vice? Aziraphale couldn’t remember. Too late, anyway -- he was already indulging himself quite heartily. _

  
**B. Sharing a drink **

Chapter 3, Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 700 words.

References to Shakespeare, love confessions, getting together

_ Then again one of the very first things Aziraphale ever said to him was that he'd given away his sword. He lied to God about it later, but entrusted Crowley first. _

  
**C. A moment’s respite **

Chapter 4, Beelzebub/Gabriel, background Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 900 words.

Weddings, enemies to friends, alien biology, wings, female pronouns for Beelz

_ “You’re asking me?” Gabriel straightened up indignantly. “Quite frankly it’s appalling. I’m appalled. An angel and a demon, or whatever they are now, bonding together for all eternity? It’s about as appropriate as… consuming _ that. _ ” _

  
**D. Waking up**

Chapter 5, Aziraphale/Crowley, E, 500 words.

Fluff, smut, sleepy sex, blow jobs, oral sex, anal fingering, Crowley has a penis, porn with feelings, post-coital cuddling

_ Crowley looked up and realised the ceiling was the night sky, dark and draped with stars the way you only got in the country, and suddenly Aziraphale’s hand was between his legs, hidden by the generous tablecloth, caressing him to hardness. _

  
**E. Signing a document**

Chapter 6, Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 900 words.

Marriage proposal, romance, weddings, love confessions, fluff

_“I had to, to weave in the new runes with the symbolic nature of, of, of their meaning.” He ran his eyes once more over the painstakingly inked and coloured vines. “Did I…? Is it right?”_

  
**F. Foreign location**

Chapter 7, Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 1,200 words.

Historical, alien biology, cuddling & snuggling, genderfluid character, nonbinary character, she/her and he/him pronouns for Crowley, the crucifixion of Jesus, metaphysics, philosophy, platonic cuddling, sharing a bed, platonic nudity, emotional hurt/comfort

_Time seems to waver, everything is heavy, he is holding his breath, and that’s when he feels it._

  
**G. A fistfight**

Chapter 8, Aziraphale/Crowley, Gabriel, T, 1,700 words.

Love confessions, accidental love confessions, getting together, fluff and humor, discorporation, BAMF Aziraphale

_ “Dear fellow,” he said to Gabriel, “do shut up.” _

  
**H. Greatest fear**

Chapter 9, Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 1,300 words.

Love confessions, emotional hurt/comfort, references suicide, angst with a happy ending, epiphanies

_“Love is fear,” Aziraphale whispers hoarsely. “I came to accept that a long time ago.”_

  
**I. Broken glass**

Chapter 10, Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 300 words.

Love confessions, fluff

_ "What next?" Aziraphale wondered the night after the Ritz. _

  
**J. Making a speech/toast.**

  
**K. On the edge of consciousness**

Eventually Chapter 12 (currently chapter 11), Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 1,200 words.

Pining, fluff, cuddling & snuggling, sharing a bed, emotional hurt/comfort, nightmares

_“You have to help me,” Aziraphale said, his voice thin and weak with anxiety, in a way that made Crowley’s own nerves twang._

  
**L. A stolen kiss**

Eventually Chapter 13 (currently chapter 12), Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 1,000 words.

Historical, fluff, cuddling & snuggling, platonic cuddling, sharing a bed, hurt/comfort, affection

_“Yesss, well,” Crowley said, hugging himself pitifully. “Gotta k-keep pushing the envelope. Sssatan I hate this sscentury.”_

  
**M. When it rains/snows/storms.**

  
**N. The color green.**

  
**O. The stars or space**

Eventually Chapter 16 (currently Chapter 13), Aziraphale/Crowley, G, 700 words.

Love confessions, getting together, romance, angst with a happy ending, fluff and angst, astronomy, stars

_“Di’ja’know most stars are binaries?” Crowley had said. Why was Aziraphale thinking of that conversation now?_

  
**P. While driving or in/around a car**

Eventually Chapter 17 (currently Chapter 14), Aziraphale/Crowley, E, 800 words.

Established relationship, smut, anal fingering, oral sex, Crowley has a penis, Aziraphale has a vulva, Aziraphale has a penis, genderfluid character, nonbinary character, public sex, mild kink, held down, porn with feelings, Aziraphale is just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing 

_Being in love out in the open with Aziraphale was so unbelievably good after so long hiding it that he often didn’t know what to do with all of his feelings. Walking down the street holding hands could put him on a high for the rest of the week. He still dishonest-to-Satan blushed when Aziraphale kissed his cheek._

  
**Q. One missed call.**

  
**R. By the water**

Eventually Chapter 19 (currently Chapter 15), Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 1,300 words.

Mutual pining, historical, love confessions, getting together, romance, accidental love confessions, angst, angst with a happy ending, st james's park (1862), alternate universe - canon divergent

_“Don’t walk away from me, angel,” he cursed, moving swiftly to catch up._

  
**S. Music [send a lyric]**

  
**T. An obscure AU [high school teachers]**

Eventually Chapter 21 (currently Chapter 16), Aziraphale/Crowley, T, 2,400 words.

Alternate universe - human, getting together, physics metaphors, high school, transphobia, nonbinary character, the them

_The first time Crowley came to work in a skirt was a bit of a shitshow._

  
**U. Coming home.**

  
**V. An abandoned/empty place**

Eventually Chapter 23 (currently Chapter 17), Crowley & Jesus, H, 900 words.

Friendship, historical, mild angst

_“So what is it? One last temptation?” Jesus asked._

_“One last choice,” Crowley said._

  
**W. Waiting impatiently for something.**

  
**X. A flash of anger.**

  
**Y. Tears.**

  
**Z. An ending.**


	2. A - Fire/Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Was self-pity a vice? Aziraphale couldn’t remember. Too late, anyway -- he was already indulging himself quite heartily.

Aziraphale stared at the candle’s meagre light. The wax was cheap and yellowish, giving off an oily black smoke as it burned, the flame dark orange. Soaked to the skin and far from home on a job from Upstairs, he had to admit he was miserable. Miserable and _ cold _. Good heavens, northern Europe was an unpleasant experience when deprived of one’s good quality wool and fur. The way Gabriel had delivered the news that he was to travel as a commoner, one might almost suspect him of enjoying the thought of Aziraphale being stripped of his home comforts for a spell. Well, he could rest happy, if that were the case, because from the rickety wooden bench to the empty hearth to the watery slop he’d been overcharged for, there was nothing comfortable in a ten mile radius.

And so he came to be here, staring morosely into the flame, trying vainly to draw some of its tiny warmth into himself, and thinking that the colour on the very edge of the flame where fire became smoke reminded him of the glint of Crowley’s hair in the sunshine. Dear Lord, _ sunshine. _What he wouldn’t give for a sunny day, a pretty spot by the river near his home, perhaps a picnic of soft-baked bread and cheeses, Crowley sprawled across the blanket talking idly of his travels...

Was self-pity a vice? Aziraphale couldn’t remember. Too late, anyway -- he was already indulging himself quite heartily.

How long had it been since he’d seen Crowley? Several decades, at least. Couldn’t be a century, could it? The humans were slowly but surely growing more numerous, and it had been some time since they’d run into each other in the order of years, but Aziraphale couldn’t help… well, no, he didn’t miss him. Not that. But once he was finally back in England perhaps it would be time to orchestrate-- that was, to coincidentally be in the same part of the country as Crowley, and have a good catch up. They had their Arrangement to maintain, after all, and a drink or two never hurt to grease the wheels. So to speak.

The door to the inn slammed open and another figure sloped in out of the appalling weather while behind him, the grey-faced owner shuffled over to fight the door closed against the wind. Aziraphale shivered and cupped his hands around the candle, wondering how much trouble he would get into for using a miracle to dry his clothes. The colour of the flame really was remarkably reminiscent, and the smoke, though harsh enough to sear lungs, was climbing up into the frigid air in curling, serpentine shapes, and for a moment, just for a moment, Aziraphale _ wished _\--

“Hello, angel,” the new traveller said, plopping down opposite Aziraphale at the trestle table. “Fancying meeting you here.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale breathed. “Talk of the devil. Or, well, _ think _…” he trailed off at Crowley’s raised eyebrows. “Uh, I mean,” he stammered. “It’s only that, us both being here, we really should have communicated better. Then only one of us would have had to come to this God-forsaken place.”

“Language, Aziraphale,” Crowley tutted, looking delighted.

“Yes, well. I presume that’s why you’re here? For work?”

“Yeaaa-- uh-- yeah, work.”

“Regardless, I’m very pleased to see you,” Aziraphale said earnestly. “This weather is miserable, isn’t it? Let me buy you a drink.”

Some minutes later (gosh the innkeep’s service was slow) Aziraphale passed Crowley a cup of the swill they sold here and almost shuddered at how warm Crowley’s fingers were.

“Angel, you’re freezing,” Crowley murmured. “Here, let me.”

The gentle brush of his demonic miracle licked across Aziraphale’s skin like flame, heating him from the inside out. His clothes steamed briefly, before settling into their new state of warmth and dryness. Flustered, Aziraphale couldn’t quite look at Crowley; couldn’t quite look away, either.

“Ah!” Crowley stopped him when he opened his mouth to offer thanks. “Don’t say anything. I’m in enough trouble as it is.” But he became cagey when pressed as to the nature of said trouble. “Nothing I can’t explain away. But if you know where I can get a horse for the return journey…?”

“Oh, oh yes, I can certainly help you there.”

Warm, dry, and suddenly in good company, Aziraphale’s spirits began to lift.

“So what do you think of the 14th century?” he asked.

Crowley waved a hand expressively. “Ehh, pretty boring so far. We’re only a couple of decades in, though. Maybe things’ll pick up.”

The Black Death would start in 1347, at which point Crowley would rue his words quite conclusively. For now, though, it was just an angel and a demon in a quiet market town somewhere in the north of Europe, happy to be in each other’s company again, a cheap candle flickering softly between them, smoky tendrils rising unheeded, forming the shape of hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to tumblr [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187693368783/a-fireflames). Comments and re-blogs feed the author :)


	3. B - Sharing a Drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then again one of the very first things Aziraphale ever said to him was that he'd given away his sword. He lied to God about it later, but entrusted Crowley first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny (mis)quote from Antony & Cleopatra.

As long as there's been alcohol, they've been drinking it together, and when they drink together, there is often a lot of talk: reminiscing and bickering, bombast and camaraderie. But It's the quiet moments that hit Crowley hardest, the mortar in the gaps between one rambling conversation and the next, the intimacy of it. Because drinking together  _ is _ intimate, and it's not just the inside of Aziraphale's wrist as he pours, or the way he slowly loses his prim posture as the night (or, occasionally, day) wears on. It's not just the pinking of his cheeks or the added sparkle in his eyes. 

It's the vulnerability of getting absolutely, unequivocally, rip-roaring  _ trollied _ with another person there as witness to every stupid thought and idea that makes it past your wine-soft tongue. 

The Romans knew.  _ In vino veritas _ . And Aziraphale has never been more a child o’ th’ time than when washing his brain in booze. The things he’s told Crowley while drunk, Satan below, it's a good thing Crowley is only interested in hoarding them, holding them selfishly to his chest (the vicious impersonation of Gabriel trying a single chickpea from the tine of a fork, the unfettered bitching about this heavenly order or that, the rhapsodising over books and food and music). Another demon wouldn't blink before exploiting it somehow, but Crowley never did fall right, rolled into his landing, something. 

Then again one of the very first things Aziraphale ever said to him was that he'd given away his sword. He lied to  _ God _ about it later, but entrusted Crowley first. Aziraphale could be infuriatingly, deliberately obtuse at times (painfully, deliciously knowing at others). He might inadvertently torture Crowley, on occasion. But he was the only creature to ever  _ answer _ Crowley's questions, the only one who ever trusted him to  _ know _ , and in return, Crowley has made knowing Aziraphale into an art.

Aziraphale pours for them in Mesopotamia, in Greece, in France. Crowley raises his glass in inns, in restaurants, in the Soho bookshop.

"What shall we toast?" he asks, and it echoes down the ages, a smooth, sliding spiral that comes around and around, but never quite in the same place. 

The place now is the bookshop, and they have survived their trials, and it’s almost, almost sunk in.

Aziraphale smiles fondly. "To us."

Crowley only hesitates a moment, because it's been hard to wait, but Aziraphale all but promised him this moment was coming the night he handed over the holy water. There are spirals here, too.

"...to us."

Of what follows, none of it is a surprise, not really. Not Aziraphale’s stumbling confession of love, not the awkward, nervous kiss. They've been drunk together enough times that Crowley would have to be an idiot to have missed the way Aziraphale looks at him sometimes, the things he’s let slip that he thinks Crowley doesn't remember (Crowley hoards those, too).

No, the surprise is this: the way his heart thunders like the ground at Aintree on Grand National day. The way his stomach twists like it's still part snake. The way his limbs tremble like he's losing blood. The way his throat goes as dry as the desert east of Eden.

Turns out, he's more sure of Aziraphale than of himself.

"You..." He croaks. "Me... You too."

"My dear," Aziraphale says, laughing softly. "I already know. You told me 300 years ago."

"Oh," Crowley says, remembering a hazy evening stumbling together through the medieval ramparts of a village on a Tuscan hilltop, crumbling yellow stone, green hills, black olives; wine-soaked and sepia-tinged. "Didn't think you remembered that."

"I haven't forgotten a thing."

The surprise is this: the soft sound Aziraphale makes as Crowley kisses his neck. The way his lips part, soft and decadent, as he tilts his head for more. How it feels to touch his skin, like lying on a sun-soaked rock and walking in to the bookshop to the sight of Aziraphale’s delighted smile all at once. The way it makes him… happy.

Perhaps, all these years, they haven’t just been drinking together. Perhaps they’ve been doing something else together, as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to tumblr [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187699502428/b-sharing-a-drink). Comments and re-blogs feed the author :)


	4. C - A Moment's Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re asking me?” Gabriel straightened up indignantly. “Quite frankly it’s appalling. I’m appalled. An angel and a demon, or whatever they are now, bonding together for all eternity? It’s about as appropriate as… consuming that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @ira-dunfort, who wanted this prompt with Ineffable Bureaucracy, and for @seaskystone, who also prompted me with the word “carillon” a little while ago.
> 
> I am using female pronouns for Beelz here.

You’re late,” Beelzebub said resentfully.

Gabriel, who felt right down to his God-given core that punctuality was a virtue, gave her a particularly vicious smile and shoved the paper cup in her face. “You’re welcome to give me an order shorter than my arm, next time.”

She looked at the cup, then at him, unimpressed. “I don’t smell any cinnamon. Where’zzz the cinnamon?”

Gabriel’s smile was now so hard it had calcified. He snapped his fingers. “There, now there’s cinnamon. Can we move on?”

She muttered something rude about the taste of aetherically-generated spices, but began to drink from it nonetheless. Gabriel didn’t understand this obsession with earthly gross matter. He would never, ever admit to it even under pain of torture, but Gabriel had tried some once, a bite of lamb stew from the shepherds’ cook pot after he had delivered the news of Christ’s birth (they had all been cowering on their knees and it had smelled very good indeed, and Gabriel had had a busy night after all) but the experience had been so intense it had literally discorporated him, and anything that good couldn’t be Good. How Aziraphale managed it… well, that was less of a mystery after his trial.

Which was why Gabriel was here right now, with his demonic counterpart, monitoring those two… abominations from under the canopy of an oak tree, presumably to shelter from the rain.

“Why don’t you just…” he mimed doing a miracle to protect himself from getting wet.

Beelzebub rolled her eyes. “They’d senzzze it, idiot.”

Gabriel tried not to acknowledge her point, and turned to where she was looking. A little way away in the field they were standing in, a large white tent had been erected, chairs lined up in neat rows all filled with humans. At the focal point, Aziraphale and Crowley stood with another human. Everyone else was watching them. Gabriel was too far away to hear what was going on, but it definitely had the air of a ceremony about it.

“What are they doing?” Beelzebub wondered aloud, the first thing she’d said that wasn’t tinged with her customary boredom. Was disdain an improvement? Gabriel would give that some thought later.

In the tent, Aziraphale was putting what looked like a ring on Crowley’s finger.

“Some kind of bonding ritual?” he hazarded. Humans had invented so many ways of joining themselves together, he had never bothered keeping track.

“But zzzwhy?”

“You’re asking me?” Gabriel straightened up indignantly. “Quite frankly it’s appalling. I’m appalled. An angel and a demon, or whatever they are now, bonding together for all eternity? It’s about as appropriate as… consuming _ that. _”

He glared pointedly at her caramel full-fat macchiato with whipped whatever. Beelzebub turned and looked at him, actually making eye-contact for the first time since he’d appeared. She wasn’t smiling. Beelzebub didn’t smile. But something in her eyes suggested amusement anyway. 

“You should try it,” she said.

“_ Bonding?” _

“Coffee.”

Gabriel blinked, mouth hanging open, and in that moment she darted forward and tipped the little spout in the lid of her cup against his lips. He swallowed instinctively. That’s all it was, the body reacting on its base coded instincts to keep from choking. It was warm and rich and complex, and for a moment his knees went weak and his vision burst with rainbows, his ears rang like a carillon, his wings manifested with a _ whump! _ and he unthinkingly put a hand on Beelzebub’s shoulder to steady himself.

“What the hell was that?” he rasped, once his tastebuds had stopped shimmying about and he could move his tongue again.

“Coffee,” Beelzebub repeated, though it didn’t sound as impatient as it might have done. He stared at her, trying to form a thought.

Just then, the shiver of a miracle passed through the surroundings, and Gabriel dropped his hand as they both turned, trying to locate its source. 

“Demonic?” Gabriel asked.

“Demonic,” Beelzebub agreed.

Crowley, then. It didn’t take long to see what he had done. On the far side of the tent, the clouds were parting and a small patch of sky was slowly growing bigger, pale pinky-orange as the sun made for the horizon. 

“Why would he care about the sunset?” Gabriel said, taken aback.

Beelzebub huffed, and hunkered down over her coffee, holding it in both hands as she sipped at it pensively. “Your side doesn’t have a monopoly on beauty,” she muttered.

It was still raining overhead. A fat drop of water fell through the canopy and right onto Beelzebub’s face. She scowled, wrinkling her nose, and Gabriel absentmindedly miracled it away as he lifted his wing over her head to stop it happening again.

“You do get a lot of musicians. Funny how that works,” he said distractedly. The sky really was very lovely, his mouth was still zinging, the odd rainbow was still dancing at the edge of his vision, and though he had managed to hold onto his corporeal form this time, it had been a near thing.

Beelzebub hesitated before replying, but when Gabriel looked down, her eyes slid away. “Yeah,” she said tightly. “Funny.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to tumblr [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187738542013/c-a-moments-respite). Comments and re-blogs feed the author :)


	5. D - Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley looked up and realised the ceiling was the night sky, dark and draped with stars the way you only got in the country, and suddenly Aziraphale’s hand was between his legs, hidden by the generous tablecloth, caressing him to hardness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we are assuming a conversation has previously been had, establishing consent, boundaries, and all that good stuff. Please note, the rating of this collection is now E thanks to this fill!

Crowley was dreaming. It wasn’t that unusual in and of itself, but this was one of the good ones, one of the ones where Aziraphale smiled at him like he loved him, and maybe touched his skin. They were out to dinner, somewhere fancy, lights turned down lower than you ever got in the Ritz, intimate and dim enough to make eyes glimmer. Aziraphale was talking about something nonsensical, in that way that made absolute sense within dreams, and Crowley was simply sitting and watching him, heart too big for his chest. Aziraphale was holding his hand on top of the tablecloth. Crowley looked up and realised the ceiling was the night sky, dark and draped with stars the way you only got in the country, and suddenly Aziraphale’s hand was between his legs, hidden by the generous tablecloth (though there was no one else around to see), caressing him to hardness.

“Aziraphale,” he moaned, pushing his hips into the touch, and he knew he was waking up; fought it, and lost. Drowsily wrestling with his throbbing heart in his aching chest, hoping to keep the dream from slipping through his fingers for just a moment longer. And then the bed rustled, and the hand on his cock moved, and it wasn’t his hand.

“Angel,” he moaned again, reaching down blindly, eyes still heavy and leaded. Wet heat enveloped him and he arched into it, his body doubling the pleasure as he shuddered through a stretch, hand finally landing on Aziraphale’s silk-soft hair. The only response was a pleased hum that Crowley felt down to his toes. “Feels good,” he murmured, languid heat rolling through him.

Between his thighs, Aziraphale was toying with his hole, gentle, teasing strokes that made Crowey’s breath hitch, before pressing one slick fingertip into him.  _ Fuck.  _ The feeling of that. The pure sensual overload of that tiny touch.

“Nnn,  _ Aziraphale.”  _

Squinting against the light, Crowley forced his eyes open. The sight that greeted him was beautiful and profane. Aziraphale in the early morning light, hair a pale halo, kneeling naked between Crowley’s legs, mouth stretched around Crowley’s erection, sucking him slowly with a look on his face as though he was savouring a really good parfait. Crowley pushed his fingers into Aziraphale’s hair, massaging his scalp, and Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered and he leaned into the touch without ever losing his rhythm.

“Love you,” Crowley rasped, and Aziraphale looked up at him from under his lashes, eyes unclouded grey in the weak dawnlight, cheeks flushed just so, radiating love so purely even Crowley could feel it, and he started to come, deep and slow and breath-stealingly sweet.

He closed his eyes again as Aziraphale licked him clean and kissed his way up Crowley’s body, luxuriating in the attention, until Aziraphale was lying by his side again and Crowley could take him in his heavy arms.

“It’s still early,” Aziraphale said softly against his lips. “Go back to sleep. We can continue this later.”

“Mmph,” Crowley said, burrowing into him. “Stay.”

Aziraphale stroked one thumb along his eyebrow. “Always, my love. Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187790646253/d-waking-up) to tumblr.


	6. E - Signing A Document

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I had to, to weave in the new runes with the symbolic nature of, of, of their meaning.” He ran his eyes once more over the painstakingly inked and coloured vines. “Did I…? Is it right?”

Aziraphale held out the document nervously. It was beautiful, he knew it was beautiful, he’d made it that way, written it in his own curling script on heavy vellum, and illuminated it around the edges like he was still toiling away in that 11th century nunnery (he’d slept precisely the same amount as he had in those days, too, which was none). It wasn’t procrastination, it was attention to detail. This contract was unbelievably important and… he needed it to be perfect. They both did. 

“Well?” he prodded, when Crowley remained silent. “What do you, ah... Does it look okay?”

Above his sunglasses, Crowley’s forehead creased. “It’s very… pretty,” he said. It was almost a question. Aziraphale’s stomach flipped with nerves.

“I had to, to weave in the new runes with the symbolic nature of, of, of their meaning.” He ran his eyes once more over the painstakingly inked and coloured vines, the white flowers and the red, starting separately and interweaving until they were indistinguishable. The swan and the crow, feathers mingling. The sun and moon overlaid on one another. “Did I…? Is it  _ right?” _

“Heaven if I know, angel,” Crowley said, still in that slightly strained way. “You’re the expert.”

That was true. Aziraphale had spent four months researching, and another two creating the document, but-- “You  _ were _ the one who gave me the template.”

“Yeah, but,” Crowley finally looked up, eyebrows pinched in something like concern. “For  _ selling _ your soul, Aziraphale. Not…” He shoved his right hand into his jacket pocket, looking very uncomfortable.

“My dear, if you don’t want to-- If you’re having second thoughts--”

“No,” Crowley said tightly. “‘S not that. We both know this is the best way to… stay together. If our old bosses try to get to us again.” His voice was starting to sound quite hoarse. “On Earth, I mean.”

“Then what?” Aziraphale prompted.

“Only, I had this thought. More an idea, really. About you and… and me.”

“Oh, I knew it,” Aziraphale fretted, hands unconsciously trying to knot together before he forced himself to stop for the sake of not wrinkling the document. “Permanently enjoining our souls, it’s too much for you, isn’t it? You don’t want that kind of attachment with m-”

“Shut up,” Crowley rasped. “Just, shut up a second.”

And then he pulled his hand out of his pocket. In it was a simple platinum band.

And then he went down on his knee, as though-- as though--

“Aziraphale,” he said, voice wavering, scorched. “I have loved you…” His voice broke, and he hissed in annoyance, raised his glasses to his head, tried again. “I have loved you since before rain was even a thing, and I know, I know we have to do this,” he waved at the page in Aziraphale’s hands without looking away from his eyes, “but if, I just really want, to  _ choose _ to do this.”

He held up the ring.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed. “My darling.” He held up the contract that would irreversibly join them for eternity. “Didn’t you know? This isn’t a bargain or a trade. I chose this when I chose you. I am choosing you. I always will.”

Setting the vellum aside for a moment, Aziraphale reached down and gently pulled Crowley to his feet. The poor creature was trembling, shaking apart under Aziraphale’s hands, and his eyes, oh his  _ eyes. _

“I love you, too,” Aziraphale said, encircling Crowley in his arms. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you.”

Buried in Aziraphale’s shoulder, Crowley took a deep, quivering breath, before letting out a muffled, “Wahoo.”

Aziraphale hiccuped out a laugh, nerves and tension giving way to relief, and held him for a moment longer, before gently pulling back far enough away to look at Crowley’s face.

“Are you quite all right, my dear?” he asked. “We don’t have to do this today, but…”

“The sooner the better.” Crowley nodded, sniffed, went to flip his sunglasses back down onto his face, but Aziraphale caught his hand before he could do it.

“Please don’t,” he said quietly. 

Crowley’s look was one of terror and vulnerability (and wonder, and hope) but he swallowed and said, “Okay.”

Aziraphale held out his hand. Crowley slipped the ring onto his finger. Aziraphale removed his signet ring, and looked a question. Crowley nodded, looking stunned, and Aziraphale willed it to fit perfectly on his ring finger.

“I’ll love you forever,” Aziraphale whispered. “I’m sorry you didn’t know that, but at least I have a long time to make up for my mistake.”

“Angel,” Crowley said, choked up, and kissed him sweetly on the lips.

“Shall we?” Aziraphale asked, gesturing to the vellum contract on the side table.

Crowley reached out, and signed his true name in fire. Aziraphale did the same, in light. The contract took hold, and Crowley took his hand, steady in the maelstrom, and when it was over, Aziraphale breathed, and flexed the wings that had manifested, and leaned into Crowley, and smiled.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Crowley kissed him again, and pressed their foreheads together. “Never happier,” he said. Aziraphale had no need to voice the delighted  _ oh, really? _ that formed in his mouth, because he could feel it. He could  _ feel _ it.

“My husband,” Aziraphale said, trying it out. Crowley shuddered. 

“You married me,” he said, small-voiced in bewilderment, holding up his hand so that his wedding band caught the light, then doing the same to Aziraphale’s.

“I did.” Aziraphale smiled harder. “Let’s celebrate.”

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Let’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to tumblr [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187840179263/e-signing-a-document).


	7. F - Foreign Location

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time seems to waver, everything is heavy, he is holding his breath, and that’s when he feels it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking the prompt in a slightly metaphorical direction. Idk idk this one was tricky and took longer than the others and became more than I expected. I hope it came out okay...

Crawly -- Crowley -- puts her hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder when Jesus finally dies. It’s been every bit as tortuous as his executioners intended, but Aziraphale has been refusing to budge until it was over. To her credit, Crawly --  _ Crowley _ \-- only asked him once. But now it’s over, and Crowley is touching him, and he craves the respite she’s offering.

“Is there an inn nearby?” he asks, voice cracking from disuse and tears.

“Down the hill,” Crowley says quietly, and supports him with one hand wrapped around his upper arm, steady and sure, all the way there.

*

It started a couple of hundred years after the Beginning. Up until then, the humans had been… manageable. Aziraphale had known each of their names, lived among them, marvelled with them and mourned their individual passing. Then, abruptly, there were enough of them that they were setting up different  _ villages. _ It all seemed to happen very quickly, and Aziraphale, who had known no other way but to leave his senses wide open, was being buried under the weight of all their love.

Because here was the thing that he had come to understand: love was so foundational to human existence that there were no strong emotions without it. Grief, joy, anger, happiness, they were like the rings of Saturn around a great, pulsing core of the stuff. And Aziraphale could sense it all, the soft patter of individual raindrops becoming, as time went on, a hammering deluge that bowed his spiritual back under the strain.

Then quite by accident, one drunken evening, Crowley -- Crawly, then -- had touched Aziraphale’s hand with his own bare hand, and… the thunderous roar quieted as something came back into balance.

It turned out, Crawly was experiencing the same thing, except in the bent his demonic nature took, which was the humans’ wants and desires. Somehow, when they touched skin to skin, their innate talents neutralised each other.

*

The inn is quiet and a little too warm, lit by the glow cast from a roasting pit and a handful of oil lamps scattered about. Food and wine appears in front of Aziraphale, though he couldn’t say how, and is cleared away again some time later. Crowley sits opposite him, eyes banked with their own light. Aziraphale doesn’t know why no one has bothered them, an unrelated man and woman travelling together, but perhaps one of them is turning that kind of attention aside (unconsciously or not), or perhaps Crowley has simply mentioned that they’re married (they’ve done that before). For once, Aziraphale is too bone weary to care.

Likewise about the shared room, the solitary bed. With a groan of battered anticipation, Aziraphale strips down to his underthings and lays on the bed. That’s… it’s further than they’ve gone before, but Aziraphale can barely think right now, driven by little more than the need for relief. Crowley joins him a moment later, sinuously, unselfconsciously naked.

“Come here,” she says, opening her arms, and Aziraphale goes, falls, sinks into her, face buried in her throat, legs winding around each other, hands cupping her sharp shoulder blades.

“Oh, God,” Aziraphale murmurs, as Mariam’s pain and Joseph’s betrayal and Mary’s black hole of grief (their love, their love, their  _ love) _ loosen their knots around his heart, cool currents of Crowley-ness pushing them gently away until he can breath again. “Oh, Lord.”

“I don’t think She’s here right now,” Crowley whispers back. “Or maybe She is. I don’t know which would be worse, to be honest.”

Aziraphale won’t admit to having wondered the same, but there is a strange sort of solace in sharing his doubts with someone, even if Crowley doesn’t know it.

*

Aziraphale got better at filtering his senses, eventually. They both did. So by the time villages became nations, they no longer needed to lean on each other quite so badly. It was a good thing, really, since they were so often flung so much farther apart. Still, whenever they did meet, habit had Aziraphale pressing his fingertips to Crawly’s, or vice versa, just a brief, friendly kiss of skin in greeting, a silent check in. And if Aziraphale ever missed the days of sitting cross-legged opposite each other on beds and woven mats and ottomans, fingers entwined, bare feet touching, looking at each other in torpid relief, well, there was no need to share it. This was progress, he and Crawly were hereditary enemies (even if the title fit uncomfortably), and Aziraphale shouldn’t  _ enjoy _ the way that touching Crawly made him feel less alone.

*

They fall asleep together, balanced, content. But something happens during the unconscious hours that causes Aziraphale to awaken in a panic. The pit of his stomach tells him he’s falling, though his eyes insist he is still on the bed. He teeters, uncomprehending, and then the balance shifts, and he is sliding down, down, down into Crowley’s dark and welcoming depths.

In a little under 2000 years’ time, this moment will be the seed of an idea that will save their lives. Right now, Aziraphale scrambles desperately against a pull like gravity, terrified, until he… settles. Or possibly hits the bottom (it’s hard to tell, not exactly an impact, more like sinking underwater, coming slowly to a stop). Time seems to waver, everything is heavy, he is holding his breath, and that's when he feels it.

It’s dark, like wine is dark, and fire-licked at the edges, and it comes to him in flashes and drops just as the white light of love does. Desire, he realises. Somehow he has fallen straight through the neutral point and is floating beneath the surface of Crowley’s talent. 

Shaking his head as though that could somehow clear it, Aziraphale looks down at her sleeping face, the fan of hair, the soft part of her lips, the shadow of her lashes, and is able to feel the desire radiating from her, rich and dark and soft as velvet.

_Oh,_ he just has time to think -- _for me -- _before the seesaw tips wildly again and he’s falling hard back into his own ethereal comfort zone. And maybe it’s because of what he’s just felt, or maybe he’s so raw from the last few days that his usual defences have simply been rubbed away, but now that he’s really _looking_ at Crowley, he feels in the light in her, too, shocking in its purity.

Crowley desiring him is strange enough, but Crowley loving him...

Aziraphale is staggered. 

“My dear,” he breathes, and can’t help touching her temple, her hair.

Love is foundational to human existence, but neither of them is human, and while Aziraphale is a being of love, he has never been  _ in love. _ He hadn’t been aware that angels  _ could.  _ It’s such a human thing.

A human thing that Crowley feels  _ for him. _

He doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t know if Crowley even knows. He doesn’t know if God is paying any attention to any of them anymore. Right now, he doesn’t care. Aziraphale lets his head sink back to Crowley’s shoulder, tightens his arms around her, and carefully nestles into their balance point once more.

He won’t see Crowley again for some time after this, he suspects. He’ll have plenty of time to consider it then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First posted [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187934177578/f-foreign-location) to Tumblr. Reblogs are love <3


	8. G - A Fistfight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Dear fellow,” he said to Gabriel, “do shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scenario with Gabriel was gacked from LollypopCop’s fic [Exposed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724044/chapters/46680493) and the uh, bit with the throwing, was inspired by [this meta](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187986062258/amuseoffyre-cheeseanonioncrisps) by amuseoffyre on tumblr. Content warning for a bit of mild discorporation. The word count _completely_ got away from me with this one, but I regret nothing!

“...and then you just need to initial here and here, sign here, and we can all be free of each other once and for all.” Gabriel gave a broad smile that oozed insincerity.

Aziraphale glanced between his former boss and the sheaf of redundancy papers he’d just been handed, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“I’m not signing anything until I’ve read it,” he said firmly.

“Here, here!” Crowley called from the back room. He was presumably still sprawled on the couch tapping away at his phone, just as Aziraphale had left him, but he had asked him to be there for moral support, and Crowley had apparently decided to take his role seriously.

“Is that…?” Gabriel asked, peering over Aziraphale’s shoulder in a pointless show of theatrics -- there was no way to see Crowley from this spot. “I thought I smelled something evil.”

“Now, Gabriel. There’s no need to be rude,” Aziraphale said with a frown as he scanned down the first page.

“It’s  _ rude _ to comment on a demonic creature’s aura of sin, now?” Gabriel asked, making a vague attempt at polite incredulity, but mostly just being an ass. 

“He has a name,” Aziraphale said mildly, without looking up. “I suggest you use it.”

“You expect me to sully my celestial tongue by speaking it?” 

That was nothing but pure belligerence, as Aziraphale had indeed heard him speak it many times before. But he took some small pleasure in the knowledge that he was starting to get to him.

“Well, Gabriel,” he said, very reasonably. “You are in my shop, and that is my friend, who I have invited to be here. If you won’t stop insulting him, I will have no choice but to insist you leave.”

Behind him, Aziraphale sensed Crowley had moved to hover nearby, drawn over by their conversation.

“Even you surely wouldn’t allow a  _ thing  _ like that to--”

“That’s enough,” Aziraphale snapped, looking up sharply over his glasses. “I won’t warn you again.”

Gabriel dropped all pretense at pleasantness. “You can’t talk to me like that, you, you renegade! I’m the archangel fu--”

“Fucking Gabriel, yes, I recall. All the same.” Aziraphale sighed. He’d hoped that this would go smoothly and easily, but somehow he’d known it wouldn’t.

“You little-” Gabriel started to say. He was interrupted by Crowley, who had clearly decided to make his entrance, standing at Aziraphale’s left shoulder.

“Shut it,” he hissed. “Or I’ll cut out your tongue.”

Aziraphale’s heart swelled to double its size. And that was when it all fell apart.

“Oh,” Gabriel said, his tone shocked and breathy, one hand coming to rest on his sternum as though he had acid reflux. “Oh. Aziraphale,  _ ew. _ ”

Aziraphale shared a bemused look with Crowley, who shook his head minutely and shrugged.

“What?” Crowley asked.

Gabriel ignored him, eyes fixed on Aziraphale. “You -- really? Him?”

Which was… unnerving. Because Aziraphale was starting to suspect he knew what Gabriel was getting at, and his stomach was suddenly doing nervous backflips.

“Ehhh, just shut up and let Aziraphale get on with signing this… whatever this is,” Crowley said, irritated. “Get your pestilent mug out of here.”

“Oh, _interesting.” _Gabriel looked between them, an expression of glee growing across his face. “He doesn’t know, does he? How long, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes.  _ Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it.  _ But Gabriel was clearly not in a mood to answer his prayer.

“How long have you been in love with a demon?”

Distantly, Aziraphale heard Crowley making some strangled noises off to his side, felt the deep blush colouring his face, the uncomfortable needle-prick of anxious sweat in his armpits and on his upper lip. It seemed a step removed from him, though, and so did his voice; he couldn’t find a single thing to say.

Gabriel gave a delighted sneer. “Oh this is just... You do know he doesn’t feel the same, right? Who knows, maybe he can’t! And here you are, pining away for -- what? -- hundreds of years? Just how far does your pathetic, unrequited  _ treachery _ go back, Aziraphale?”

_ Ah _ , he thought sickly.  _ So Gabriel can’t sense anything from Crowley either. _

He’d thought… he’d thought he hadn’t been mistaken, hadn’t misread the signs, but then they’d saved the world and freed themselves from everything that was holding them back, and Aziraphale had made some really very pointed hints… and nothing had happened. So here they were, a month later, friends -- friends first, friends always -- but nothing more. And Aziraphale’s doubts were now being given awful confirmation by the messenger of God himself. 

Who was demonstrably loving every minute of it.

“I just want to know, Aziraphale. How could you? And with this foul, worthless piece of--”

“Oi! Standing right here!”

“How could I?” Aziraphale croaked. He glanced in Crowley’s direction but couldn’t quite bear to meet his eye. It was all over, the cat was out of the bag, but he’d be damned if he stood here and let Gabriel say such things. “Crowley may be a demon but he is more worthy of love than any single angel I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with. I am p--” his voice deserted him, and he had to swallow, try again (try to contain the desperate quiver of his lip). “I am  _ proud _ to love him, even, even without reciprocation.”

“Aziraphale…” Crowley said quietly, but Gabriel was talking over him again, and Aziraphale was quite simply sick of the sight of his horrible, gloating face.

It should perhaps be mentioned at this point that, putting aside the soft exterior and cultivated air of harmlessness, the thing that it is all too easy to forget about Aziraphale is that he was made for combat. Oh he’s spent six thousand years (plus an undefined amount of his existence prior to the invention of time) working very hard  _ not  _ to fight, but he can, and he is good at it, and he is also very strong.

“Dear fellow,” he said to Gabriel, “do shut up.”

And punted him through a wall.

Said wall was the one on the side of the street, and he sailed right into the middle of the road trailing brick and glass like a comet-tail of masonry, where he was promptly hit by a rubbish lorry doing an improbable 60mph down the narrow Soho street, and discorporated on the spot.

“Uhh,” Crowley said faintly. “That was a thing.”

Aziraphale swallowed, and let the crumpled, unsigned papers fall to the desk at his side. He still couldn’t look at Crowley.

“I would really prefer it if you left now,” he said.

“I really don’t think I should.”

“I can’t-- I can’t bear--” A sudden, sharp sob ripped through him, the precipitous end of his self-control, and then he really couldn’t, and he had to escape. Not onto the street, because people would see if he just flew away out there, but stumbling up narrow staircases, up onto the tiny roof space he never used, he thought he might be able to get away unnoticed. 

Distraught, wings out, he was about to lift off when a warm hand caught his wrist.

“ _ Please _ , Crowley!” Aziraphale begged. The world was wobbling alarmingly now, and he mustn’t blink, he mustn’t. “Please, please just let me salvage what little of my dignity is left.”

“No,” Crowley said simply. “Was that true, down there?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes, the tears fell, and the frantic energy leached out of him.

“Gabriel is many things,” he whispered, “but he isn’t a liar.”

Crowley made a small, shocked sound, a sharp little intake of breath, and when Aziraphale opened his eyes again, Crowley had pushed his glasses into his hair. 

“So you really…?”

“Yes.”

“But you really can’t…?”

“Can’t what?”

Crowley’s eyes went wide. “Oooooh,” he said slowly. “Yeeeah. Listen. I didn’t know if that was, well, but I, uh, I turned it off.”

“Turned it-- turned what off?”

“You know.  _ It. _ Knew that you would sense it, so I hid it. Never really knew if it was working, though.”

“Crowley,  _ what?” _

Crowley dropped his wrist, and spread his hands wide, looking as helpless and vulnerable as Aziraphale had ever seen him

“Love, angel,” he said. “I’m in love with you. Painfully, desperately in love with you. Have been for millennia.”

“But, but, the Ritz, with the hands, when I tried to… and later on, you…”

Crowley gave him an imploring look. “Aziraphale. You said I was going too fast for you. I  _ had _ to leave the ball in your court, no other choice. Couldn’t stand to mess this up, not with you.”

“So you’re saying I wasn’t obvious enough?”

“Looks like... not.”

Hope nudged tentatively at his ribs. “And now?”

Crowley scrubbed at his eyes, then glared at the floor with a look of intense concentration, and then…

...and then…

Love.

Tremendous, glorious, beautiful  _ love. _ Not just flashes, but a great beaming light that, for a moment, dwarfed the sun to insignificance.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale breathed, quite overcome. “You’re radiant.”

“Dont… don’t get mushy,” Crowley said, voice wavering.

“If there was ever a time to indulge me, I think now would be it,” Aziraphale murmured. “Crowley, you love me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”

Then he was in Crowley’s arms, white wings wrapped around them both, basking, melting, so very, very grateful.

“Thank you,” he said. “For showing me. I don’t know how you managed to hide it all for so long, but… thank you. And please never do it again.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, sounding very serious. “You just threw Gabriel across the street for me. I’m gone. I’m done for. That’s me, handing in the towel. I’m completely and utterly, one-hundred percent a lost cause.”

“Oh. Well, good.” He basked some more. And then, “Do you think we should thank him?”

Crowley snorted. “Let’s send a thank you card back with your papers, angel. Nice fruit basket. Really announce it to the whole office.”

“Oh yes, he’d love that,” Aziraphale said, smiling into Crowley’s shoulder. “Perhaps they’ll start calling him Cupid.”

The afternoon rang with the sound of Crowley’s laughter, and on the roof, Aziraphale held him in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187975468108/g-a-fistfight) on tumblr. Comments and re-blogs are loved and adored :)


	9. H - Greatest Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Love is fear,” Aziraphale whispers hoarsely. “I came to accept that a long time ago.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mention of/talk regarding suicide. I think it's mild, but take care of yourself.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says softly, stopping in the office doorway.

Crowley, having held the front door of the flat open for him, is a few steps behind and can’t see what he’s looking at.

Until he can.

Ligur.

What’s left of Ligur.

“Oh,” Aziraphale says again, and when Crowley glances at his face, he is white as the desert sand.

And maybe it’s because the whole holy water thing was so fraught for so long, and maybe it’s because he’s just dog tired, but Crowley can’t think of a single thing to say. Which means they just stand there, side by side and one step from the threshold, staring at melted demon goo together.

Eventually, Aziraphale clears his throat and inclines his head towards Crowley, although he doesn’t meet his eye. “Let me clean this mess up,” he says. His voice sounds wrong; Crowley doesn’t like it.

“I’ll help,” he says. It’s his default.

“No!”

The word is spoken so sharply, with so much conviction, that a little sizzle of heavenly power radiates from Aziraphale like static electricity, the hairs on Crowley’s arms rising in response, and he steps back automatically lest a spark jump the gap between them.

“_ Stay there _ ,” Aziraphale says, the same weight of command in his tone, and because Crowley _ is _ dog tired, he crosses his arms over his chest, leans one shoulder against the wall, and just lets him get on with it.

It doesn’t take long. Crowley’s demonic miracles would be no match for holy water, but Aziraphale makes short work of it. A minute or two, and all that was left of the demon Ligur is gone. Crowley doesn’t mourn his passing.

Aziraphale takes a deep breath once the doorway is cleared, and stands there giving Crowley an eggshell look, a delicate, brittle, barely-whole look. “I hope you were careful.”

Crowley shrugs, limbs overly languid with exhaustion; he doesn’t even need to make a show of it. “Wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t been.”

This doesn’t seem to do anything to appease whatever is bothering Aziraphale.

“Was it… was it awful?” the angel asks.

“Nothing worse than he deserved,” Crowley replies. This, too, does not seem to go over well. He is genuinely confused as to why Aziraphale cares.

“Why?” Aziraphale asks, and there’s a very quiet wretchedness hiding in the corner of his tone. “Because he was a demon?”

Crowley frowns at this. Aziraphale might love all creatures but he isn’t this compassionate, Crowley knows he isn’t. “No,” he says slowly, trying to make his point. “Because he was about to try and kill me.”

That does something, Aziraphale’s eyes widening in comprehension. “You said you had an old friend over. When you couldn’t speak.”

“Yup.”

“Oh dear, and that was before we averted Armageddon. I suppose they’ll be back. My side, too.”

“Suppose they will.” They stare at each other in silence, before the ants crawling over Crowley’s skin make him straighten up, drop his arms, look around aimlessly. “It was quick, at least,” he says.

For a moment, the blink of an eye, Aziraphale’s lower lip wobbles like he’s trying not to cry. Then he turns away, and Crowley assumes he imagined it.

“I wish I had been here,” Aziraphale says to the empty room. “Then you wouldn’t have had to…”

“It was fine, angel,” Crowley says. He’s so damn tired but this conversation is putting him on edge, and he’s starting to get fidgety with it. “This is actually what I wanted it for, if you recall. And,” Crowley adds, because apparently he’s a bloody-minded bastard as well as a tired one, “honestly it’s a good job I used it all up on that pustulent nobhead because then there was none left for me after the fire.”

The silence left in the wake of his words is yawning, gaping, the silence of a black hole on the wrong side of the event horizon, the clamour of light and destruction that abruptly drops away to nothing. 

Aziraphale has turned back to look at him, eyes huge and glittering. “Don’t joke, Crowley,” he says, and oh, the pleading in his voice. It sends Crowley’s stomach into his feet.

“Not joking,” he says weakly, even though he had been, sort of. “Aziraphale, don’t you know?” He gestures expansively. These last couple of days, he can’t seem to stop being honest. “This world and all its delights, they’re nothing if I can’t share them with you.”

Aziraphale’s face goes through a complicated set of expressions before settling on anger. _ Too fast, _ Crowley laments, but there’s nothing for it now.

“That’s not as romantic as you think it is,” Aziraphale says. And that’s… not what he expected. 

“Wh-- what?”

“Ending yourself because you can’t have me? This isn’t a _ play _, Crowley.”

“I… didn’t think it was.”

Aziraphale stands there a moment longer, so anguished Crowley is in pain with it, and then suddenly he lunges forward and Crowley barely has enough time to brace himself before Aziraphale has collided with him, a direct impact, arms wrapped around him and holding him so tightly it hurts.

“Promise me,” Aziraphale says, voice muffled into Crowley’s neck. “_ Promise _me you won’t ever do something that stupid.”

“I promise,” Crowley says immediately, meaning it instantly. “I do.”

Aziraphale is shaking, trembling like spider silk, and Crowley tries to soothe him, tries not to enjoy this too much, because Aziraphale is clearly very upset about something, something that Crowley can’t quite get his head around, and he shouldn’t go liking the fact that it’s brought him to Crowley’s embrace, but he does. Some part of him does.

“I never meant forever,” Aziraphale says, and his voice is awful.

Crowley swallows, hushes him, strokes his hair, asks gently, “Forever?”

“That you… that I couldn’t… I never meant that I would never be with you. I just needed a little more time.”

“I know,” Crowley soothes, even though his world is spinning sideways, even though his bones are shaking in resonance with Aziraphale’s. “It’s okay, angel.”

“I do love you,” Aziraphale says. “Crowley, I do. Please don’t ever do something so irrevocable. Give me a chance to… at least give me…”

He chokes off, and Crowley tries to remember to breathe, and there, there it is, it’s all clear now. The argument in the park, the look in the car, the tremble in his voice. Aziraphale had been scared Crowley would use the holy water on himself. Scared out of his mind. Because he was just a demon, who deep down didn’t believe he was worthy of love. Who might not understand Aziraphale’s request to wait for him, because of that. Who perhaps might think, when the forces of hell were on his doorstep, that there was nothing out there worth fighting for. Who had just admitted that he… that he might’ve…

“I’m sorry,” he says. He pushes Aziraphale back a little way, slips off his glasses and takes Aziraphale’s face in his hands. “Angel, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were so afraid.”

Aziraphale blinks at him, lashes dark and clumped. “Love is fear,” he whispers hoarsely. “I came to accept that a long time ago.”

“Oh, angel,” Crowley breathes. “No it isn’t.”

And maybe they aren’t out of the woods yet, maybe Crowley will still end up melting away in a rain of holy water tomorrow with no wing to protect him, maybe undoing the work of six thousand years of fear on Aziraphale’s psyche is an impossible task for one night, and maybe the same can be said for Crowley himself with thinking he could in any way deserve this, but for tonight, he’s going to banish all fear from this little part of the world. They deserve that, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [First posted here on tumblr.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188086353033/h-greatest-fear)


	10. I - Broken Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What next?" Aziraphale wondered the night after the Ritz.

"What next?" Aziraphale wondered the night after the Ritz.

"Whatever we like," Crowley replied.

They sat in the back of the bookshop drinking and laughing together over the vast raft of possibilities in front of them. They could travel the world! Eat an encyclopedia's worth of food! Go to alpha centauri in the Bentley! There was a hysterical edge to it, giddy with freedom.

But what Aziraphale really treasured, ultimately, were not the grand gestures, but the small. 

For example, Crowley staying the night on the couch, and the sight of his sleep-hazy golden eyes in the dusty morning light.

For example, Crowley sauntering into the bookshop with a wide grin on his face, bunch of flowers in hand.

And, "What are you doing here?" Aziraphale asked on reflex.

And, "Just wanted to see you," Crowley said.

And, "Oh," Aziraphale said, floored by happiness. "Oh, yes." Because they could do that now.

For example, the time he got a bit of broken glass in his finger while washing up the dinner things, a tumbler slipping from his soapy fingers and breaking in the sink.

And, "Here, let me," Crowley said, crowding in as he took the finger tenderly.

And, "No," Aziraphale said, breathless from Crowley's nearness and his own daring. "No more getting my knuckles rapped for frivolous miracles, remember? I'll do it myself."

And Crowley's smile, a surprised curl of his mouth, that made Aziraphale warm all over.

For example, the way he didn't step away when Crowley got close. Didn't push him away when his heart started to thump. Met his eyes and returned his smile and entwined their fingers when Crowley took his hand.

For example, when Crowley said, "I love you," and Aziraphale simply smiled and said, without hesitation, "I love you, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188105942638/i-broken-glass) to Tumblr.


	11. K - On The Edge Of Consciousness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You have to help me,” Aziraphale said, his voice thin and weak with anxiety, in a way that made Crowley’s own nerves twang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipping J for now as I have no ideas -- feel free to drop by my [tumblr](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/) if you've got a good one!

Crowley was up and scrambling for the front door before his ears had even registered the sound of frantic knocking. Realistically it could only be one person, and if he was in real danger Crowley hoped he’d have enough sense not to stand around in the hallway politely waiting to be granted entrance, but his stupid animal body didn’t know that.

“Aziraphale,” he said as he yanked the door open, caught in a horrible combination of panicky racing heart and lingering bleariness from interrupted sleep. “What the bloody heaven’s the matter?”

Aziraphale barged right past him and into the flat, wringing his hands and, frankly, looking a disheveled mess. He made a beeline for the kitchen and then stood there, turning in confused circles, not seeming to be really seeing anything, Crowley included.

“You have to help me,” he said, his voice thin and weak with anxiety, in a way that made Crowley’s own nerves twang.

“What’s going on?” he said, suddenly completely awake. “Is it them, did they come ba--?”

“What? No.” Aziraphale finally stopped his dizzying tail-chasing and gave Crowley a wretched look. “I keep falling asleep.”

“Uhhh,” Crowley said unhelpfully, trying demonfully to resist the urge to sag in relief too visibly. He had an inkling this was one of those times Aziraphale needed handling with kid gloves. Like the only other time he’d been in Crowley’s flat, come to think of it -- the night before their trials -- when every step Crowley had taken had been painstakingly thought-through and forecast so as not to spook him. And Crowley was good with gentleness when it came to Aziraphale. Gentleness, patience, kindness (Satan forbid), Aziraphale deserved all of those things and they were easy to give him. But Crowley had just been roused from a deep sleep himself, and wasn’t at his best. “Do you… Is that… a problem?”

“Yes! I’ve never-- not until-- and now I can’t seem to stop.”

“Well, okay, but maybe you should just, I don’t know, let it happen? If you need it?”

“But the dreams, Crowley!” Aziraphale said, eyes huge and clouded with fear. “Nightmares,” he whispered. “How do you make it stop?” And, okay, that explained a lot, but the look he was giving him. Crowley hated it. _Hated _it. Had to fix it.

“You could…” he scratched the back of his neck, trying to work up the nerve to complete that sentence. 

The last week, since they’d saved the world and then themselves, Aziraphale had been giving some promising signals that he was ready to catch up to Crowley, now. But still, that old fear lingered, that he would push too hard, go too far, be too _much_, and ruin everything the way he had in St. James’s Park all those years ago. He couldn’t stand for Aziraphale to draw away again, not now when Crowley could see him every day, be a welcome sight every day, if only he could pace things right.

On the other side of that equation were Aziraphale’s eyes, which sometimes seemed to change colour with his mood in a way that had given Crowley cause to wonder, idly, over the millennia, if they were his angelic signifier in the way the other angels had touches of gold or bronze (or creepy little crucifixes between their teeth). The same way Crowley had his demonic sigil marked beside his ear. But the point was… the point _was_, Aziraphale was looking at him with eyes pink-rimmed and murky grey, pleading with him in that silent way he had of asking Crowley to _fix this, please._

And so Crowley sucked in a shaky breath and said, “You could sleep with me. In my bed, I mean. Purely-- purely for sleeping. Might be better for you if it’s not a, uh, a solo activity.”

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley held his breath. Then Aziraphale nodded a little jerkily and said, “Yes-- um, yes. Thank you. That would be-- appreciated.”

Little formal, Crowley thought as he led the way to his bedroom. But not a complete disaster. Then it hit him that he had just suggested getting into his bed with Aziraphale. This bed, in fact, right in front of him. In the immediate future. With Aziraphale. Who’d agreed. And for a moment he couldn’t think, nothing but white noise buzzing between his ears. 

“I’ll just,” Aziraphale said, gesturing over his shoulder in the direction of the en suite, and Crowley nodded vaguely, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

G-- Sa-- Argh! Whoever! He was a wanker and he needed to calm down. The bed was big, it was really no different to sitting beside each other at the theatre, or drunkenly sprawling in the back room of the bookshop. Yep. Absolutely no different to either of those every-day, fully-clothed, well-lit scenarios.

He climbed in, the spot where he’d been lying before still warm, and settled awkwardly on his back, staring up at the ceiling, fingers linked twitchily across his stomach. A couple of minutes later, Aziraphale came back (vest and underpants, entirely too much skin on show, but Crowley wasn’t looking, _wasn’t looking_) and only hesitated a moment before sliding beneath the covers.

Crowley turned the lights off with a gesture.

“I know you don’t generally take kindly to it,” Aziraphale said softly, after a moment. “But please let me say thank you. This must be such an imposition and I--”

“Shut up,” Crowley interrupted. “It’s not.”

“Honestly, Crowley,” Aziraphale huffed. 

He didn’t sound especially put out, but something about the fragile thinness of his voice forced Crowley to add, “Anything I can do to help you, I would do it. Wouldn’t even think twice.”

In the dark, the sound of Aziraphale swallowing was loud. “I know,” he said. “I just hope I don’t... take advantage.”

“You couldn’t,” Crowley said. And this was stupid. Aziraphale was _in his bed _and this was intimate and honest and too fast and _stupid. _And he was doing it anyway. Story of his immortal existence.

There was a rustle of bedclothes, perhaps Aziraphale rolling onto his side, hopefully getting ready to sleep, and Crowley tried to breathe deeply, relax. The fading adrenaline of his abrupt wake-up must have had an effect, as he was actually starting to drift when Aziraphale spoke again.

“Do you really feel that way?” he murmured.

Crowley’s voice was gritty with sleep. “Yeah. Yes. Anything, angel.”

He glanced over. Crowley didn't need light to see by, perk of being a demon, and so it was easy to make out Aziraphale's face, his awed expression, his eyes -- dark blue, clear as the deep ocean, the faint glow of Crowley's own yellow eyes glittering in reflection like sunlight on waves.

Aziraphale exhaled softly. “Hold me?”

Crowley didn’t trust himself to speak, instead opening his arms to let Aziraphale work his way into them as he would. He smelled good and his body was a soft, warm weight against Crowley’s, and the miracle of it was somehow greater than anything either of them had done. Quietly, profoundly, Crowley was filled with love and the rightness of it all as he finally fell back to sleep.


	12. L - A Stolen Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yesss, well,” Crowley said, hugging himself pitifully. “Gotta k-keep pushing the envelope. Sssatan I hate this sscentury.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to @ineffably-effable on tumblr, who was sick and requested something soft with cuddles. It worked nicely with this prompt :)

Aziraphale sighed at the sad heap of demon huddled on the wooden stool beside the fireplace.

“Oh dear,” he said, closing the door behind him on the dark, rainy day. “Is it…?”

“Yup.”

“You hate it when that happens.”

“_Yup._”

“What was it this time?” he asked, toeing off his boots. “Witch? Priest?”

“P-plague doctor,” Crowley said through chattering teeth.

“Oh, really? That’s a new one.”

“Yesss, well,” Crowley said, hugging himself pitifully. “Gotta k-keep pushing the envelope. Sssatan I hate this sscentury.”

Aziraphale wisely didn’t respond to that. This happened to Crowley every now and again. Some human with an ounce of uncanny ability would recognise him for what he was and ward him off in whatever superstitious way was popular at the time. Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure exactly why it worked, since human magic generally wasn’t strong enough to affect beings like them, but perhaps if they believed strongly enough…

Whatever it was, it had the same effect on Crowley as the flu, and after that time Hastur had tried to take advantage back in Mesopotamia, what it meant was Crowley washing up at Aziraphale’s door. Or inside his door, as was usually the case. Crowley never had a problem inviting himself in to Aziraphale’s lodgings. Very demonic of him, really. Absolutely nothing Aziraphale could do about it.

“Come on,” Aziraphale said, helping him up to walk him to the bedroom. Crowley slumped against him, a feverish heat pressing into Aziraphale’s side. “That’s it, nearly there.”

“Don’t b-baby me,” Crowley muttered, but he was barely coherent, so Aziraphale didn’t really feel the need to listen to him.

“Of course not, dear. You’re a big, mean demon, very scary. Now just--” he pulled the thick goose-down duvet back and deposited Crowley beneath it-- “get comfortable, and I’ll get you something to drink.”

“Aziraphale,” he whined. “Don’t g-go.”

The angel pursed his lips, trying very hard to hold back a smile. There was something just very… not funny, exactly. Amusing? Endearing? Whatever it was, Crowley had it in spades when he got like this, and Aziraphale did rather enjoy it.

“I’ll stay,” he said judiciously, “if you tell me what happened.”

Crowley pouted, and drew the covers up to his nose until nothing but his fever-bright, resentful eyes peered over it.

“I’ll come and sit next to you,” Aziraphale conceded. It was okay. He knew by now that Crowley wouldn’t remember in the morning.

“Fine,” Crowley muttered. Aziraphale sat down beside him on the bed, back against the pillows, and when Crowley curled over onto his side and tried to bury his face against Aziraphale’s hip, Aziraphale smiled softly to himself and reached down to stroke the demon’s hair.

“So?” Aziraphale prompted. These stories were often very entertaining, and made excellent blackmail material when he was drunk and being outwitted. Not to mention they… well they had a certain theme to them, one that Aziraphale would occasionally hold in the cupped hand of his mind, and turn over in the wistful quietude of a night spent by the fire, with nothing better to occupy his thoughts.

“Ugh,” Crowley grunted. “‘S embarrassing.”

“Price of admission, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley made some more sounds of miserable protest, wriggling himself closer until his head just happened to land in Aziraphale’s lap, and then lay there for a moment, shivering, before Aziraphale began to gently massage his scalp.

“Baby,” Crowley muttered finally. “Abandoned. Was dropping it off at a church. B-bloody doctor caught me.”

Aziraphale breathed in sharply. Crowley made a sound of complaint at the pause in ministrations, twitching restlessly until Aziraphale continued.

“That was very risky,” Aziraphale said eventually.

“What else was I g-gonna do?”

Aziraphale stared down at him, trying to puzzle him out. Of course, to an angel, there would be no question. The plague was making many such orphans, but things weren’t so bad yet that the churches had closed their doors. And so, you found an abandoned baby, you took it to a church. Simple. Obvious.

Except, Crowley was a demon, and when Aziraphale tried to imagine Hastur or Ligur or (God forbid) Lord Beelzebub in the same situation, that was not the outcome that he foresaw.

“You really are…” he murmured, but didn’t dare finish that thought out loud.

Remarkable.

Dear.

Compellingly, unexpectedly moral.

Crowley’s pained groan snapped him out of it. He wasn’t in any real danger, but Aziraphale knew things would get worse before they got better, and he did so hate to see someone in pain.

“May I?” he asked softly.

Crowley would never ask for it, but if things were really bad, he would grudgingly accept the offer. This time he barely hesitated before nodding into Aziraphale’s thigh.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Aziraphale said, and poured all the healing power he was capable of into Crowley’s trembling, overheated body. It wouldn’t heal him the way it would a human, but it would take away the worst of the symptoms and let him sleep.

When Aziraphale had done all he could do, Crowley’s body was limp, his breathing shallow but even, asleep. Aziraphale set him back comfortably amid the pillows, tucked him in, and was already leaning over him when he realised what he was about to do.

With a human, he would finish the healing with a blessing; a kiss to the forehead. That wouldn’t do anything for Crowley. Even worse, it might actually hurt him, especially in this state.

Close, close, Aziraphale gazed down at his sleeping face, brushed back a lock of hair, stemmed the flow of angelic power, and pressed his human lips to Crowley’s forehead.

“Sleep well,” he whispered, and went to get a book. Crowley wouldn’t remember, but Aziraphale would stay by his side all night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188777628603/l-a-stolen-kiss) on tumblr. Reblogs and comments are loved and adored <3


	13. O - The Stars or Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Di’ja’know most stars are binaries?” Crowley said._ Why was Aziraphale thinking of that conversation now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipping down the alphabet for this one because I was inspired by the Sleeping At Last songs [Neptune](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188609040908/neptune-sleeping-at-last-lyrics-okay-now) and [Pluto](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188609212363/sleeping-at-last-pluto-lyrics-and-heres-the), deeply Aziraphale songs both.

*inspired by Sleeping At Last’s songs Neptune and Pluto, deeply Aziraphale songs <3

_“Di’ja’know most stars are binaries?” Crowley said._ (When had it been? Oh, a few hundred years ago at least -- Aziraphale couldn’t remember exactly, but before the night sky had become all but obliterated by artificial light, and long before the humans had ever dreamt such things as binary stars.)

_“Wassa binary?” Aziraphale asked._

_“You know,” Crowley said, making a sort of whirling motion with his hands that Aziraphale, in his rather inebriated state, found distinctly hard to follow. “_You know_. Two stars doing-- doing the thing.”_

_“The--”_

_“Thing, yes! The thing. Wassit called. When they go round and round.”_

_“Orbiting?”_

_“Orbiting! Right. ‘S the thing where two stars orbit each other. Most stars’re like that.”_

_“How odd.” Aziraphale frowned. “Whyssat, then?”_

_“Dunno.” Crowley shrugged expansively, normally jagged angles now smooth and loose. “Figure issa feature, you know -- of gravity.”_

_“Hafta take your word for that,” Aziraphale said, who’d never been the creative sort. “Hold on, though. If-- if most-- why isn’t the sun one of those bi-- bira-- twin stars?”_

_“Almost was, almost was,” Crowley said, drink sloshing as he gesticulated, but miraculously never spilling. “Jupiter was a candidate. Didn’t quite pan out.”_

_“What happened?”_

_“Welllll… technically speaking, not enough mass. But you ask me, ‘s lacking the oomph.” He grinned, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Didn’t have the audacity.”_

Why was Aziraphale thinking of that conversation now? Why now, when they had survived the actual Apocalypse, successfully tricked their way into indefinite freedom, and just returned from a delightful dinner at the Ritz?

Ah, yes, that was it. Failure to ignite. Lack of oomph.

Because he was standing in the middle of his reconstituted bookshop, and he was alone. Because when Crowley had got up to leave for the night, hands in his pockets and head ducked with surprising diffidence, Aziraphale hadn’t known how to stop him, how to tell him honestly, how to ask him, stay, please. This is still hard and I’m not brave like you, but stay, please. Please, stay.

And so he stood staring at the door through which Crowley had just exited, the joy and exhilaration of the day fizzling out as a sudden rainstorm gathered behind his eyes.

How was it possible to want something so much and be so paralysed in the reaching for it?

He glanced up at the cupola, a couple of twinkling stars just visible through the aging glass, and knew he was being ridiculous. Knew the scared, frustrated tears were unworthy of him, and still couldn’t make himself move.

“It’s the thing where two stars orbit each other,” he murmured. “Feature of gravity.” Doomed to orbit and never intersect, never collide. For an eternity. Good way to avoid fiery obliteration, that. Good way to avoid pain.

“You are a coward,” he whispered to himself. He had spent his entire long existence worrying about one thing or another, and even now-- _even now-- _“Not enough mass. Didn’t have the audacity.”

Alpha Centauri was a binary system. And Crowley… Crowley… Crowley had walked out of the door and Aziraphale had just let him. Oh God, he’d just _let him._

“No!”

Aziraphale swiped at his eyes and nose, pushed through the door, pushed through himself, leaned into it like a harsh wind, like pain, and ran outside. Crowley was standing by the Bentley, one hand on the roof, head bowed.

“Crowey!” Aziraphale called. His voice was too loud in the night air, and Crowley’s face when he turned was pale. Bare and awful.

“Sorry, angel,” he said nonsensically. “I’m trying to leave, I swear, just give me--”

“No, wait,” Aziraphale interrupted, eyes welling again. “Please. I don’t want to be a Jupiter!”

“What?” Crowley asked, but by then Aziraphale was pushing his glasses to the top of his head, holding his face in both shaking hands.

“I lo-- I _love_ you,” he said. “Please… come back in. Make this your home.”

Crowley stared, his eyes shining like two stars in the night, infinitely more beautiful. 

“Okay, angel,” he said to Aziraphale, and leaned down as Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s shoulders, and collided.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First posted [here on Tumblr.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/188596711338/o-the-stars-or-space)


	14. P - While Driving or In/Around A Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being in love out in the open with Aziraphale was so unbelievably good after so long hiding it that he often didn’t know what to do with all of his feelings. Walking down the street holding hands could put him on a high for the rest of the week. He still dishonest-to-Satan blushed when Aziraphale kissed his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this one out of order so fingers crossed it works... 
> 
> This could be considered part of the same universe as [Tornadoes in England](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19260556/chapters/45805405) and [The Bomb and the Books](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20540990), but also works fine as a stand-alone. This one is _explicit_ fair warning ;)

“Here. Pull over here,” Aziraphale said.

Clenching his teeth, Crowley turned into the deserted little overlook, parking haphazardly, and cut the engine.

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale tutted. “Only you could park a car this size across three separate bays.”

Head falling back against the headrest, Crowley let his eyes drift closed the way he’d been fighting for the last fifteen minutes. “You’re lucky I didn’t drive us over the edge,” he grit out.

“If you say so,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley could just hear the smugness in his voice. “Poor darling, is it too much for you? Maybe I should stop.”

Crowley grabbed his wrist with snake-strike speed. “Don’t you daaare,” he said, the final vowel sound coming out in a moan, and Aziraphale, blessed creature, started moving his hand again, caressing Crowley firm and maddeningly slow between his legs.

*

Crowley had woken up in the mood for a cock that morning, which was fortuitous, because that’d meant he’d got to give Aziraphale a long, dreamy eating out before fucking his pussy and making him come again and again, until he couldn’t any more. Now it seemed Aziraphale was determined to get his own back.

The suggestion for a drive in the country seemed innocent enough -- they both liked the South Downs and it made a nice day trip from London. And if Aziraphale seemed more flirty, enjoyed the picnic spread more suggestively, gave more coy glances from under his lashes than usual, well, this whole thing between them -- this whole being openly in love thing -- was still new enough that Crowley was absolutely not going to do anything except lap it up like the greedy, starving, pathetic bastard that he was. 

He’d already been a bit hot and bothered by the time they packed away the remains of their meal, so when Aziraphale laid him down on the tartan picnic blanket and proceeded to make out with him like they were horny teenagers, Crowley’s blood really started to race. And the only thing worse than rutting up against his beloved in a public place, so turned on that he was fully prepared to come in his trousers with zero regrets, was Aziraphale pulling away with a small smile and a light in his eyes that was pure mischief, and saying,

“Wouldn’t it be lovely to drive up to that little lookout we found last time and watch the sunset?”

And then proceed to grope Crowley’s hard cock the entire way there.

*

The sunset might have been the most spectacular he’d ever set eyes on in his six-thousand-plus years, and Crowley wouldn’t have known it. He was a little distracted by being bent face-down over the Bentley’s bonnet, jeans tangled around his thighs, Aziraphale’s hand between his shoulder blades holding him hotly in place as he mercilessly fucked him with his fingers.

He’d already come once, embarrassingly quickly in Aziraphale’s mouth still inside the car, and was still so fucking turned on he was already rocketing towards the edge again.

“Ah-Aziraphale,” he moaned, hands slipping uselessly on warm metal. “ _ Fuck.  _ Hurry up. Anyone could drive by.”

“I don’t think you mean that.”

“No, they really could, we’re --  _ uh  _ \-- we’re in the middle of a national park.”

“I meant, I don’t think you want me to hurry up.”

“Ff-fuck,” he muttered again, screwing his eyes closed, because yeah, okay, being in love out in the open with Aziraphale was so unbelievably good after so long hiding it that he often didn’t know what to do with all of his feelings. Walking down the street holding hands could put him on a high for the rest of the week. He still dishonest-to-Satan  _ blushed _ when Aziraphale kissed his cheek when they were out and about. But this… this was…  _ gah _ , this was beyond,  _ ahh,  _ beyond anything he could’ve…

Aziraphale pressed down more firmly on his back to still his writhing, fingers thrusting hard and sure, stroking that little spot inside that sent him wild, and Crowley imagined the sight they made to anyone driving by just now, him with his arse bare, flushed and disarrayed, and Aziraphale, jacket removed, sleeves rolled up but otherwise buttoned up tight, driving him to incoherence with nothing but his fingers and his presence. They’d probably get arrested. Fuck, Aziraphale in jail (again), handcuffed, bashful but still somehow radiating smugness,  _ nnnng _ ...

Crowley started to come, cock untouched, moaning loud, loud, let everyone hear.

“That’s it,” Aziraphale murmured, leaning over so that his breath brushed Crowley’s ear. “That’s it, my love. You’re so gorgeous like this, you’re so lovely. You were so good to me this morning, I need to give you a suitable thank you. Take a moment, love, catch your breath, and then I’m going to have you right here again, under the stars.”

“Angel,” Crowley whimpered.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “With God as my witness.”

“You kuh--  _ uh _ \-- kinky bastard.”

Aziraphale nuzzled and kissed the back of his neck. “ _ Your _ kinky bastard,” he murmured. “Let them all know it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First posted [here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/187884538493/p-while-driving-or-inaround-a-car) to Tumblr, if you feel like reblogging :)


	15. R - By The Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t walk away from me, angel,” he cursed, moving swiftly to catch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @kedreeva over on tumblr, who basically coerced me into this. Both blame (and credit for some of the wording) is due; inspiration from [this post.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/189002673528/because-i-am-a-sucker-for-accidental-love)

“Out of the question,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley’s vision for the rest of the morning started to dissolve into sad, lumpy slurry. He’d thought… get this over with, get the angel to agree to handing over the only real thing he could use to defend himself from his own side, and then… high tea? Lunch? Something pleasant in which he could recover from the fit of desperate nerves that had had a choke hold on his throat ever since he’d sent that runner to Aziraphale’s shop with his request to meet.

“Why not?” he asked, holding himself unnaturally still so that he wouldn’t shake apart.

Aziraphale’s eyes, ever changeable, were a clear, pleading green. “It would destroy you,” he said. “I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley!”

And there was… that was… something. It was something that Aziraphale cared enough to be worried, but Crowley’s reaction to his affection had always been an instinctive, visceral denial, and with the nerves to boot he couldn’t help the way he spat out, “Not what I want it for! Just insurance.”

Things devolved from there. His fault, of course. But Aziraphale worrying about being in trouble for giving this most simple of help after everything they had done for one another was like a retraction of the previous sentiment (the one Crowley had rejected, yep, but fuck him if he hadn’t been planning to turn it over and over in his mind while he lay in bed tonight, and probably for years to come). Then the way Aziraphale said _fraternising_, yeah, felt that one. Aziraphale may not have been a warrior in almost six thousand years but he apparently still knew how to land a solid gutpunch. And suddenly, like the snake that he was, Crowley was hissing possibly the biggest lie he’d ever uttered, to the love of his immortal life, in the middle of a sunny morning in St. James’s Park.

“I don’t need you.”

And what Aziraphale said next might as well have been the knockout blow for all the senses Crowley was left with after.

“And the feeling is mutual, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Crowley muttered, words twisting in his twisted mouth, heart-bones twisting with it, and then Aziraphale threw the note into the pond and ignited it for good measure, and the… the _pettiness_ of it got to him.

“Don’t walk away from me, angel,” he cursed, moving swiftly to catch up.

“Crowley, _please_,” Aziraphale hissed over his shoulder, the fourth or fifth time he had used Crowley’s name in this conversation, like he could ward him away with it somehow, a hand on his chest to hold his separate. “You’re making a scene.”

“Oh, oh, _I’m_ making a scene,” Crowley said. “That was me refusing to do a friend a favour by throwing his request in the water?”

“Tsk,” Aziraphale said, ploughing on down the path as he glanced about nervously. 

“Nice touch, by the way. The water. Nice little way to rub it in.”

“Oh, you,” Aziraphale said, stopping abruptly to turn to face him, finger waving in the air. “You _serpent_,” he whispered heatedly. “Of course you wouldn’t understand.”

“Understand what?” Crowley shot back, but Aziraphale just shook his head furiously and stormed off again. Crowley, of course, followed. When had he ever not? “Aziraphale, understand _what_? That you don’t want to get in trouble? How on Earth would you? After all these years, has Upstairs ever once said something about the Arrangement?”

And honestly, would they care even if they did know? Crowley wasn’t sure at this point. He didn’t say that bit, though. Aziraphale, unable to physically move fast enough to get away from Crowley, kept pointedly schtum, and Crowley glared daggers into the side of his stupid, fluffy head. They were nearing the end of the path now, where Crowley’s new carriage was parked. It was black, shiny, comfortable, very easy on the buttocks, and he’d been looking forward to showing it off to Aziraphale as he took him out somewhere to relax away the stresses of the morning. No, this was definitely not the way he’d envisioned the day going.

“Come on,” he tried, wheedling because he had nothing left to lose, and very little shame. “After all these years, all the things we’ve done for each other, why can’t you just do this one little--”

“Because I love you!” Aziraphale snapped. His eyes shone, green as a drowned meadow, a spring flood over grass, and Crowley couldn’t speak. Regret flashed across Aziraphale’s face as he looked away, and Crowley might have staggered if he hadn’t been keeping himself so rigid already, might’ve fallen to his knees, begged him not to take it back. But a soft exhale, and he looked up again at Crowley, and Crowley understood that it wasn’t regret at the sentiment, but at having exposed it to the light of day, and saw also the realisation that it was too late now to backtrack or salvage any dignity, saw him sag into it like the wind had just dropped out of his sails and he was left stranded in this sea of feeling. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale repeated softly (how did the light catch in his eyes so?) “and I can’t stand the thought of you… leaving me, because if you could, if you could even _think _about doing that, then you couldn’t possibly feel as I do.”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale in stillness for a moment, a small number of breaths, an insignificant amount of time in the long span of their lives, and a small infinity, before grabbing him by the arm and hauling him over to the carriage. Of all the places, of all the _times_ to say such a thing, Aziraphale had to pick the one place and time when physical touch between two male-presenting entities was least acceptable.

“Get in,” he said furiously, shoving Aziraphale up the steps. He clambered after him, knocking his own hat off in his haste, and fumbled at getting the door closed, the blinds pulled down, snapping directions at the startled driver.

“What in heaven’s name--” Aziraphale started, before his eyes went wide and he stopped. It might have had something to do with Crowley slithering over to sit beside him, one black-gloved finger pressed to his lips.

“You idiot,” Crowley said, his voice a tangled briar patch. “You absolute buffoon. You-- I cannot believe you-- you--”

Aziraphale gave him a wounded look and belatedly batted his hand away. “There is _no need _to be so cruel about it.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and he was raging, he was really bloody _pissed_, so he had no idea why his voice was coming out so gently. “You obviously missed it the first time so let me spell it out for you: I would literally destroy my own kind for even the smallest chance to stay by your side just a little bit longer. If you think that means I don’t feel the same way then I can’t-- I can’t help you!”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale breathed. “Really?”

Crowley made a frustrated noise, resisted the urge to shake him, and instead turned his face towards him and pressed his mouth to Aziraphale’s.

“I love you, too,” he said a moment later, drawing back just far enough to speak. “Have done for millennia. Want to keep doing it for millennia to come. That’s why I asked.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale murmured. They were very close. Crowley searched his eyes.

“Can you just-- trust me?”

“I’m afraid,” Aziraphale whispered.

“I know,” Crowley said, stroking his cheek. “I know, angel. But I’m not going anywhere.”

And Aziraphale, seemingly lost for words for the first time in six thousand years, simply reached out and drew Crowley forward into a second kiss, and a third.

Perhaps the morning was salvageable, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First posted to tumblr [here.](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/189160931908/r-by-the-water)


	16. T - An Obscure AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Crowley came to work in a skirt was a bit of a shitshow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of this after TheKnittingJedi's [An Absence of Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20491979/chapters/48628070) put the idea of physicist Crowley into my head. This is the horribly self-indulgent secondary school teachers human AU no one asked for. _You do not need to understand the physics involved to enjoy this fic_ and I’ve purposely left out a lot of detail for that reason, but for anyone curious about Crowley’s demos, [here’s the one with the ripple tank](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egRFqSKFmWQ), and [here’s the one with the laser](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUmIL2hbgR4) (skip to the 3 min mark).
> 
> CW for transphobia and the author’s crude sense of humour.

“What do we know about light?” Crowley asks his Year 13s. There are only four of them left at this point, three boys and a girl, his die-hards who’ve stuck it out with him for the last six years and now get to learn about the good stuff. They’re all sat around a single desk together at the front of the lab, no paper, no pens, just the five of them chatting it out.

“It’s a wave,” Brian says immediately. You can always rely on that boy to rush in head first.

“Is it?” Crowley asks, one eyebrow raised above his sunglasses (the Head hates them -- hates him, really -- but they’re prescription so there’s sod all she can do about it).

“Actually, yes,” says Wensleydale. “It reflects, refracts and diffracts. Those are wave things.”

“Good answer,” Crowley allows.

“But?” Adam asks cautiously, clearly biding his time before committing himself. Smart boy.

“This is a trick question,” Pepper says. “Look at his face.”

Crowley can’t help grinning, though he manages to make it sarcastic. Smarter girl. There’s a bit of quiet while they mull things over, including the possibility that their teacher is getting his jollies at their expense (they’re not wrong).

“Crowley?” Adam eventually asks. “What’s the answer?”

_When he came to Tadfield Secondary all those years ago, the first thing he did in September with each new class was introduce himself as Crowley. Not Sir, not Mr. Crowley, not even Dr. Crowley (although that title sat a little more comfortably). Just Crowley. With that and the sunglasses, the Year 7s thought he was painfully cool (bless them). The older kids almost certainly thought he was a middle-aged dork who was trying too hard, but that was okay. He had his reasons. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t find out._

“Okay, so,” Crowley says. “Wensley was right, light _does_ reflect, refract and diffract, and those things _are_ wave properties. Have you guys ever heard of Young’s double slit experiment?”

A round of head shakes. 

“Well,” Crowley says, getting up. “I did show it to you in Year 8, but we didn’t call it that, then.”

At this point, the kids notice what piece of equipment he’s walking over to, and groan.

“Not the ripple tank.”

“Nooo, come on, Crowley, that thing never works.”

“Course it does, you cheeky bunch,” he tells them. “You just couldn’t see it properly when there were thirty-odd of you and Gregory Johnson couldn’t keep his fingers out of the water. Adam, get the lights, will you?”

_He met Aziraphale on the first day of term. No kids in that day, teachers all in jeans and casual clothes, and there was Aziraphale in a three piece suit that was more stuffy than formal, fussy little tartan bowtie finishing him off like a neat little gift-wrapped angel. They were both new that year, and the Head made them stand up in the staff meeting to wave awkwardly at the rest of the room. Crowley caught his eye as they did so, sharing a look of muted horror and self-consciousness, and later, as they were all filing out, Crowley caught up with him and handed him back the paper diary he had dropped. Crowley had guessed Aziraphale would be part of the English department; he looked at all times as though he wished he had his nose in a book. Crowley was right on both counts (though later, he would also learn, Aziraphale rather liked putting other parts of his body in Crowley, too)._

“What do you see?” Crowley asks his students as he adjusts the lamp to the right angle.

They peer down over the ripple tank, the peaks and troughs of the linear wavefronts nicely illuminated in the low light.

“Uh, is this another trick question?” Pepper asks, just as Brian says, again, “Waves.”

Ah, these kids.

He leads them through it, shows them how the straight line of the wavefronts will curve and bend around an obstacle in their way, and form neat, beautiful semicircles when directed through a single aperture. The double aperture is harder to see, but he sketches it out on the whiteboard for them.

They talk about diffraction patterns, and what effect the size of the aperture has on the curvature of the waves, and then he asks, “What if we did the same thing with a football, or a ping pong ball? Rolled it along a nice smooth surface until it got to a hole in the wall? What would happen then?”

_The first time Crowley came to work in a skirt was a bit of a shitshow. Honestly, it always was, even when he was still in academia, but he was done with minimising himself for others’ comfort. The Head called him into her office before he’d even had a chance to dump his things in the prep room that morning, demanded to know what kind of joke this was, ordered him to go and change immediately. Crowley stayed calm, and cold, and so bitingly sarcastic it was undetectable to someone with as little imagination as the Head. And when he pointed out that his demure knee-length pencil skirt and sensible flats did not, in fact, contravene the dress code, and that she could not discriminate against him on the grounds of gender identity, she looked about ready to give herself an aneurysm. He knew he’d won this round, though._

“It’d go straight through,” Brian says, spurred on by his apparently correct answers so far. 

“Actually,” Wensley says, “if it clipped the wall it might change direction.”

“Is that part of the hypothetical?” Adam asks.

“Good question,” Crowley says. “In this case, no, it goes straight through, or, if it skims the wall, it skims it equally on both sides.”

“So the ball goes in a straight line,” Pepper concludes, and Crowley nods.

“Yup. The ball is like a particle. Waves diffract through an opening; particles don’t.”

“You still look smug,” Pepper says shrewdly. “There’s definitely something more to this.”

Crowley can’t help the evil tinge his smile takes on. These children know him far too well. Then again, he has been teaching them since they were 11.

“Water’s all well and good, but wanna see what happens with a beam of light?”

_After dealing with the Head, there were more uncomfortable moments with the students. A Year 11 boy wolf-whistled him in the middle of a busy corridor that went precipitously, salivatingly quiet in the aftermath. Zeroing in on the culprit with unfailing experience (and the benefit of six feet one inch in height), Crowley feigned ignorance and asked the boy to explain what he meant by it. He watched with eyebrows innocently raised over his sunglasses as the boy’s eyes widened and his face reddened and he began to comprehend the depth of his mistake. Sensing the shift, someone in the crowd of onlookers hooted, then someone else did the same, and then it was a rabble, but not directed at Crowley, and taking pity, Crowley made a joke and let the boy go and made a mental note to go easy on him in their next BTEC Science class._

It has to be a monochromatic and coherent light source to really get the point across, so Crowley uses the department’s trusty old laser and a special slide with apertures so fine you can’t see them with the naked eye. He lines everything up, the kids well back, and waits for their eyes to adjust. Without the slits, the laser makes a single, small dot on the opposite wall, but with the slits...

“It’s a diffraction pattern, like a wave,” Adam says, sounding disappointed.

“My _god_, is it?” Crowley says deadpan. “I guess this beam of light is a wave, then. For now,” he adds mysteriously. “What about a beam of electrons?”

“Huh?” Pepper scrunches her forehead. “What’ve they got to do with anything?”

“They’re particles, like the ping-pong ball. Right?” Adam says.

“Shall we find out?” Crowley asks.

_It was a long tiring day, that first day in a skirt. Honestly, they always were. But by the end of it, two good things had happened. The first was that one bright 11 year old boy called Adam Young had asked him if this was the reason he didn’t want to be called ‘Mr.’ and whether he would prefer different pronouns to match his look (Adam didn’t use the word ‘pronouns’, but the intent was there) and Crowley got to say, in front of 30 Year 7s, that no, his same old pronouns were fine, but thank you for being curious. _

_The second was that, on running into him in the carpark on his way home, Aziraphale took one look at Crowley and said he looked like he could use a drink. They ended up in a nearby pub, agreeing about the stupidity of football, arguing about Shakespeare and the flat-earth theory (before Crowley gleefully realised he was being very politely trolled), and snogging sweetly, messily up against the driver’s door of the Bentley._

He has to show them a video for this part, because the science budget for a four-form entry rural state school does not stretch to replacing the department’s electron gun when it breaks beyond repair. Anyway, sometimes a simulation is better for the speed of human comprehension. They watch as tiny little dots are fired in a stream, aimed directly at a double slit just like the laser beam was. On the other side of the double slit is a sheet of detecting material that lights up in the simulation in the exact spot an electron hits it. 

It shouldn’t work. If the electrons travel in a straight line like balls, you’d expect to see two distinct lines on the detector, one for each aperture the electrons can come through. It’s almost immediately obvious that the electrons are _not_ doing that, and after a minute or so, as the dots build up on the detector screen, an identical diffraction pattern to the one they’ve just seen from the laser becomes apparent. 

“I don’t understand,” Brian says, sounding betrayed. “Electrons are particles, but there they’re acting just like the waves.”

Adam turns to give Crowley a considering look. He does it sometimes, and it’s unnerving, the way he can look right through a person. The boy is preternaturally perceptive. Crowley has to struggle not to squirm.

“They must be both,” he says. “Particles _and_ waves.”

“How can something be two things at once?” Brian asks. The other three turn looks on him that vary from disbelief, to secondhand embarrassment, to withering scorn. Brian’s eyes flick to Crowley, in his silk blouse and women’s trousers and long hair in a ponytail, and he flushes. “Oh, right. Yeah. ‘F course. Sorry, Crowley.”

_The thing was, though. The thing was. After a couple of months, it all just became… normal. Boring. That was the amazing, wonderful thing about teenagers -- give them enough exposure to a male-shaped person wearing his hair in a half-bun, and he became yesterday’s news, nothing but ‘Oh, that’s just Crowley, sometimes he wears a skirt, whatever.’ Didn’t matter anymore, or very rarely, and to Crowley at least, the way in which it mattered most was how it made Aziraphale’s eyes return to him in that endearing double-take, trying to predict which sound of approval he would make at the back of his throat, how badly he would want to _undress_ Crowley after hours in the privacy of one of their homes, and how quickly he’d be able to manage it. _

“That’s all right, Brian,” Crowley says, showing his teeth, truly enjoying himself now. “But remember Ockham’s razor, right? Simplest explanation.”

They’re all watching him a little nervously, now, sensing that this has got somehow personal. Ockham’s razor, truly ironic, given that William of Ockham invented it in support of divine intervention, pretty much the opposite of what they’re about, in this classroom. Sometimes the principle works, though, even in a discipline as hellishly mind-bending as quantum mechanics. 

“Doesn’t sound that simple, being two things at once,” Adam says carefully. “Sounds really kind of complicated.”

“And that’s not to say that the quantum world isn’t seriously weird and complicated,” Crowley says, waving a finger at him. “But in this case, we can either say that an electron is _both_ a wave and a particle, or…” and here he pauses for dramatic effect, taking in his tiny, loyal class before continuing. “Or, it’s neither. It’s something other. Something altogether _else_. Richard Feynman called them wavicles, and that’s as good a word as any. So electrons are neither particles nor waves, but wavicles.”

_Yes, there were still problems, Tadfield wasn’t exactly Utopia for the non-conforming, but acceptance had to start somewhere, and Crowley was aggressively committed to being himself. And besides, he’d gained Aziraphale out of it; as far as Crowley was concerned, any battle was worth that._

_How did you get into physics? Aziraphale asked him once, post-coital and close under the duvet. You really love it. I could never get past those benighted generator thingies at O-level._

_Yeah, that stuff’s pretty boring, Crowley agreed. Let me tell you about wave-particle duality, instead, angel._

“Which brings us back to light,” Crowley says, sauntering back and forth at the front of the room, the kids watching him with rapt attention. This, this is what he loves, the build up, the careful lead in, mount the evidence and let them draw the conclusions for themselves. It’s a little bit like watching their brains open up like flowers after rain, and he thinks they sense it, too, these kids he’s known since they were barely waist-high. Yeah, Crowley’s a bit weird, a bit eccentric, a bit too nerdy, cares a bit too much, but if you commit, if you stay with him for the journey, this is what you get, without fail--

“So far,” he says. “So far, it’s been behaving like a wave.” He grins at them, hands in his pockets, exaggeratedly nonchalant in the face of their expectation. “Who wants to bet there are times when light behaves more like a particle?”

\--A little bit of magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted [here on tumblr](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/189659840258/t-an-obscure-au). Comments and reblogs are loved and adored <3


	17. V - An Abandoned/Empty Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So what is it? One last temptation?” Jesus asked.
> 
> “One last choice,” Crowley said

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should be editing, but I woke up at 6am on a Saturday with this ficlet fully formed in my head, so here we are.

The garden at Golgotha was wild and untended. Crowley hissed at the dry plants as he moved through it, barely satisfied when they pulled themselves up a little straighter. He wasn’t there for the plants, though.

Three days, Crowley had been here. Three days since he’d watched Joseph of Arimathea lay Jesus’s body in the cave on the far side of the garden, wrapped in linen but unanointed -- the bare minimum to meet the dictates of his laws. Three days since Aziraphale, heartsick, had had to go back up to Head Office to report on the success of the crucifixion. Crowley had expected someone else to be sent in his place to watch over the tomb, but no one had come. No humans, no angels, no one but him and the dead body in the rock. Three damn days.

They'd just… left him.

Crowley stopped a few feet away and stared at the entrance to the cave. It was small, unassuming. A handful of Roman guards had helped Joseph to cover it with a large rock to keep animals out, but that was no obstacle to a demon. Crowley took a breath and extended his senses for a moment, just to make sure he really was alone (of course he was), and then moved the rock aside with a gesture.

Inside, the cave was not very deep, lit all the way to the back by the daylight now flooding in. Not that Crowley needed help to see in the dark, but the size of the place was an insult, and it was another coal with which to stoke his outrage.

Jesus’s body had been laid unceremoniously on the floor. As Crowley watched, the body twitched, and then sat up. Crowley raised an eyebrow. He’d heard what the prophecies had said, of course, but She was hardly one to keep her word, so he’d wondered…

Jesus fumbled at the linen covering his face for a moment before peering at Crowley a little blearily.

“Father?” he asked.

“No, it’s me,” Crowley said.

“Oh.” Jesus scrubbed at his grimy face and the breath went out of Crowley’s lungs to see him look so much the boy he’d once been. “I failed, then.”

“No. No,” Crowley said softly. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Jesus squinted up at him for a moment before stiffly climbing to his feet. The linen fell away to reveal his near-naked state and filthy body, and he let a mild grimace touch his face before bathing himself in a celestial light that stung Crowley’s eyes. He blinked hard, and when he could see again, Jesus was clean, freshly shorn, and wearing a white robe not unlike the kind of thing Aziraphale tended to favour.

“That’s better,” he sighed, before turning back to Crowley. “So what is it? One last temptation?”

_I held you as a baby,_ Crowley wanted to say._ In a stable under the light of a supernova. When everyone else was asleep and Aziraphale panicked because you were crying, I took you in my arms and soothed you. When you were a child, I tended your scraped knees and dried your tears. I showed you all the kingdoms of the world and I tried to warn you._

“One last choice,” he said.

_I would never hurt you._

“Crowley,” Jesus said, with so much compassion it made Crowley scowl. “You know there’s no choice.”

Aziraphale had warned him as much. Crowley still didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Jesus was human. If he didn’t have free will, then what was the point? (Of course that’s the point, Aziraphale had told him tiredly. Of course he could choose otherwise. But if he’s to be a good man, then he won’t. He can’t. And he knows it.)

“I warned you She wasn’t kind,” Crowley said, his voice coming out irritatingly scratchy.

“You did,” Jesus acknowledged. The way he said it without judgement in any direction was infuriating. Then he cocked his head and fixed Crowley with that piercing, incisive stare that humans were so unnerved by (in that moment, Crowley was not immune, either). “You’re not what I thought, when I first found out who you’re working for.”

“Shut up,” Crowley muttered without heat. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

“Perhaps,” Jesus said, with a small, boyish smirk. “For old time’s sake.”

“You always were a little brat,” Crowley said, impossible pride rising up in his chest, pushing out through his eyes. “Just, listen. You might be dead now, but that’s no reason to stop sticking it to the Man, all right? It’s not like She can throw _you_ out.”

Jesus just smiled, and it was the otherworldly one, the one that could fill you with warmth and strange dread all at once. He reached out and pulled Crowley closer, hands coming to rest on either side of his head, fingers in his uncovered hair.

“I will always love you, even though She does not,” he said, grave and quiet, and kissed Crowley on the forehead. A long, silent moment passed. Crowley shut his eyes to make it last, and the emotion of it ran down his cheeks. Then Jesus spoke one final time, “Go in peace, my friend.”

And so Crowley went. What else could he do? The argument had been lost long before now. When he turned back to wave one last time, the cave was empty.

“Dramatic son of a bitch,” he muttered. At his side, an olive tree quivered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted to [tumblr here](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/190591398108/v-an-abandonedempty-place).


End file.
